Word: seydlitz
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Night of the Generals is basically a detective story, and a good one. A prostitute is found brutally stabbed to death in wartime Warsaw; a witness claims to have seen a German general leaving her apartment. Major Grau of the Abwehr narrows the suspects down to three: General von Seydlitz-Gabler, a cautious, ineffectual commanding officer representing the Prussian military tradition; Major General Kahlenberge, his able and acerb chief of staff; and Lieutenant General Tanz, the dashing leader of the Nibelungen (Special Operations) Division. But Major Grau is reassigned, and does not resume his investigation until 1944--two years later...
Building on this plot, Herr Kirst offers a satirical view of life in the upper echelons of the Wehrmacht as he follows the efforts of von Seydlitz-Gabler's wife to marry their daughter, Ulrike, to Tanz. Ulrike is in love with Lance Corporal Hartmann, who is being kept under cover after inadvertently surviving a skirmish that the German press, for propaganda purposes, reported as an atrocious slaughter. And Hartmann is a young naif (of the sort that seems obligatory in a German anti-war novel) who serves, in his pacifistic innocence, as an effective exponent of the author...